Canon

Cannons made from soda cans. Based on my knowledge, a cannon consits of a barrel, pressure chamber, and a projectile. Within the chamber an ignition occurs creating an explosion, propelling the projectile through the barrel.

Basically like this.
  

However, there is more physics involved. The forward momentum of the explosion must be equally counterbalanced by something. Therefore the base of the cannon must be large and stable enough to withstand the opposite force. We plan to make "BOOMS" in our classroom in the near future, with our class-made cannons made of cans. Good luck to us.

F m a

Losing marks for dropping a cart is a very steep price. Best be careful.
Today we were split into eight groups, each with individual carts, weights and ticker tapes. The purpose of the experiment was to prove Newton's classic second law F = m * a.
The ticker tape would be attached to the cart, which would be attached by string to the weights. As the weights fell, it would drag the cart along through a pulley. The ticker tape would then track the acceleration of the moving cart.
 There were two cases, acceleration vs force--mass staying constant--, and acceleration vs mass--force staying constant.

CASE 1
Our results for case one proved as was expected. The more mass added to the force, the faster the cart would move down the table, and the faster the acceleration would be. Our resulting accelerations displayed this with an increasing trend.                     Mass      Acceleration
       1          0.259 m/s^2
       2          1.07 m/s^2
       3          2.92 m/s^2

                                            
CASE 2
Our results for the second case were slightly off the predicted pattern. Logically, if the force remains constant, the lighter the mass the greater the acceleration. However, due to possible experimental error, our results showed that there was a parabolic trend with a low acceleration for 2 weights, a vastly higher acceleration for 1 weight, and a much lower acceleration for zero weights.

Mass      Acceleration
   2          0.259 m/s^2
   1          2.01 m/s^2
   0          0.624 m/s^2


In conclusion, the entire lab went overly well, but due to experimental error--possibly ticker tape malfunction--on the second part, there were misconstrued data. Despite all this, the data proves that Newton's Second Law correct.

Tower Power

It stood, "YES!"
"WHAT! NOOOOOO! YOUR'S CAN'T BE TALLER THAN OURS!"

Sadly, however, it was only the third tallest. On the other hand, it was one of the only three that stood and only one of two that remained standing at the end of the day.
The basic structure was a cylindrical base that would be thicker and heavier than the rest of the tower. We would then scale up from there to a point. The tower was made of the three sections, each made of a newspaper. The result, although hard to stand at first, was free-standing and able to compete for the tallest tower of the class. Too bad. Mr. Chung, if your reading this, I sincerely hope that you will consider giving our group an extra mark just for being the last few to stand. Congratulations to the group that one, you truly bested us. 

Tallest Structure in the World

The Burj Khalifa, yeah i know its hard to pronounce, but it is what it is. The Burj Khalifa is a skyscraper located in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and is currently the tallest man-made structure to date, reaching a height of 828 m. Completed in October of 2009, the superstructure is stable and secure, leaving dead animals in its wake--that is a slight exaggeration. The foundation is a large reinforced mat that is 3.7 meters thick with a total of 12,500 cubic meters of concrete. The core structure system itself is essentially a spiraling "Y" shape, used to reduce oncoming wind against the tower. But this all can be summed up in one picture.

Damn...

That is super pretty.